So what do YOU do?

So what do you do? This common icebreaker of a question essentially asks, “So what’s your job?” Right?

But it shouldn’t, I say. 

Through the years, I've offered a variety of straight-faced replies – sometimes for fun, sometimes to get an insight into the person who asked. For instance, I’ve replied, “Well, I do handstands!” Or, “I do parlor tricks.” Or, “I can tie my shoes.” 

If they pressed me about a job, I’ve replied that I was either a professional balsa-wood dollhouse maker or a factory worker of high-tech “kanuder valves.”

My favorite reply? “I'm assistant team leader crew chief at the Burger Barn down on Highway 21. I've only been there three years and already I'm in charge of the fryer!" I say proudly with a big smile.

“Oh,” one woman once replied while fumbling for polite words “That's.. uh... nice.”

There is no Burger Barn, or Highway 21, or such things as kanooder valves, of course. But you'd be surprised how often people equate someone else's worth in our society with how they make a living. And this is just plain wrong.

Regardless if it's a high-paying or minimum-wage job, we typically put too much importance on what we do as workers rather than who we are as people. 

This issue first slapped me across the face on a frigid day in the Windy City, back in 1999. That day I met John Hairston, a doorman at the posh Hilton Tower Hotel in downtown Chicago.

The ever-smiling Hairston told me he loved his job – greeting guests, coordinating valets and opening doors, lots of doors.

"I take pride in my work, and wouldn't switch jobs for anything," he told me while greeting yet another stranger.

Still, I noticed he was routinely treated with condescension, even rudeness, by hotel guests. He didn’t mind, though. His job didn’t define him. Does yours define you?

Before I began writing for a living, I was treated with similar disrespect while working in a family catering business for more than 20 years. Many of my customers looked down on me for whatever reason, but it taught me a lesson I've been feeding off for years.

Our jobs too often define us instead of defying us to transcend their true meaning. Making a living is one thing. Making a life is quite another. As Mark Twain once quipped, it’s the difference between a lightning bug and lightning.

Read more of my earlier columns on my Chicago Tribune webpage, here: https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/chi-jerry-davich-staff.html